Burial of a ‘Home Boy’: A Crossroad of Sorrow and Rage

As Cesar Salgado’s body was lowered into a grave shortly before noon Friday, a youth wearing a sweat shirt with “Nite Owl, RIP” written on the back dropped a black and white kerchief that came to rest on the gray coffin.

A bullet fired from a passing car ended the 15-year-old Cesar’s life a few minutes after midnight Sunday, as he was leaving a party with a friend in Santa Ana. Police say the murder on East Walnut Street is gang-related.

But for Cesar’s friends and schoolmates, many calling themselves “home boys,” a painful process was just beginning. These youths, the boys with their black hair slicked back and wearing either white T-shirts or black sweat shirts, and the girls with their bangs combed up as high as peacocks, were at a crossroad of sorrow and rage.

And the adults in their lives--from parents to school officials--have been working all week to lead them away from the kind of anger and violence that killed Salgado and another youth during a weekend of gang gunfire.

“We try to emphasize to them that we all loved Cesar and we want to see his memory live on by being the best, and not by lying next to him dead, or following in the traditional track of blood for blood,” said Spurgeon Middle School Principal Cathy Makin, who knew the boy. “We try to tell them that the suffering and the killing has to stop.”

Cesar was a student at Horizon High School and spent three years at Spurgeon Middle School, which his younger brother Rafael still attends.

At Spurgeon, in fact, Cesar was one of several students who appeared in an anti-gang video produced by the county Department of Education’s gang-diversion program, Operation Safe Schools.

In the wake of Cesar’s death, students at Spurgeon were so moved that they wrote essays on the slaying as part of their state-required California Assessment Program tests. Makin said she wrote state officials to explain why the students strayed from the essay’s state-assigned topic.

A Mass was recited at Immaculate Heart Catholic Church for Cesar, who was known as Nite Owl because he liked to stay up late. Then he was buried at Fairhaven Memorial Park. Family and friends waited patiently as cemetery workers in green uniforms shoveled dirt on the casket. When the union crew broke for lunch before filling the grave, family members knelt on the ground to pray until the workers returned to complete the job.

Juan and Susana Salgado sat dabbing at their eyes as their son’s body was lowered into the ground. He works as an office custodian and she is a hotel maid. Cesar was the second of four children, all boys.

Was Cesar a gang member as some youths in his neighborhood claimed? Some friends outside the funeral home nodded yes; others said no. “He was a home boy, but he wasn’t a criminal,” one youth said.

“Cesar has never been in Juvenile Hall,” a friend named Jess said. “He was just a cool guy who liked to kick back.”

Many of the youths, the boys as well as the girls, say they resent being lumped together with gang members who dress like them and commit crimes.

“All the time you talk about home boys, you’re not talking about criminals,” a girl named Betty said.

“We’re different,” said another girl named Sonia. “They (the police and others) don’t know us from the inside, just from the outside.”

Gus Frias, manager of the Operation Safe Schools program, said that all week since the shootings he and other school officials have been counseling the kids.

“We talk to them about pay-back, about peer pressure and about how you deal with that,” Frias said. “That is real.

“The No. 1 approach I use is respect for the family,” he said. “I tell them to think about Cesar’s mother, think about what this would do to her if something else happens. Because what these kids hear from others is, ‘You don’t have any guts. If you loved (Cesar), you’d go down there and kill for him.’ ”

Cesar’s oldest brother, Juan, 17, said there would be no payback.

“My mother told me not to listen to no one,” Juan said. “You try to be good, and other people see that as a sign of weakness,” he continued. “A lot of things are running through a lot of people’s heads. What’s in my head? I don’t want to go to jail. I think Cesar would want what our mom wanted, to have this rest in peace, me and her both. But I know there are a lot of people who have some hard feelings.”

Cesar’s father said he will never understand the viciousness that is ripping apart the neighborhoods near their Eastside home.

“We are all Mexicans, why aren’t we being supportive of each other instead of killing each other,” said the older Salgado, who came here from Mexico in 1977.

“I would never have believed how much violence I would see,” he said. “As a parent, one has to take more precautions for one’s own children. People don’t pay enough attention to their children. My kids are no angels, but they always ask me permission before they go anywhere.

“My son had nothing to do with those people who did this to him,” he said. “That’s what hurts so much.”